Sunday, October 7, 2007

Every Corner has a King

The Futurist and the Gardener were sitting in a Tolstoyan restaurant eating breakfast. The Futurist said that he had learned that 6 olives equals to one egg as nutrition facts. Then he wondered, where might the General be? They always ate the breakfast together.

”Nonsense.” Said the Gardener. ”Eggs are eggs. The General is in India.”

”In India!” The Futurist wondered and felt the envy hitting him when he was thinking on the amount of travel bonus points the General had got with his flight to India. The Futurist dismissed the envy, because he knew it was for bad and he tried to be happy for the General – traveling to India couldn’t have been any punishment for him. ”I wish I could once travel so far myself.”

The Gardener was insulted. He had just brought the Futurist to Venice to cool his travel bonus fever and then to the Holy Land, but coming to Palestine didn’t seem to count, because of the use of boats with no travel bonus point.

This time the Gardener decided to wash his hands from the travel bonus business for good and told the Futurist that he is planning a world tour and that the Futurist could follow along. There would be many places to visit old friends, they would travel in all the continents except Antarctica.

Futurist’s sucking of an olive was seized annoyingly half way in between the lips and his eyes darkened when his inner calculator started to roll on high volume. All the continents except Antarctica...bonus points beyond imagination. Traveling between the continents would foul even the time itself...one could get married several times the same time in different places the same day around the world...write 45 travel books of 15 locations from three different angles!

”I can never thank you enough of this.” Said the Futurist and spend the rest of the breakfast telling the Gardener all the places they had to visit and what airlines would be wise to use and even tried to convince him for first class seats for the long Australian flights. The Futurist forgot immediately that the trip was originally Gardeners personal journey to visit his friends and that the Futurist could come along merely of mercy. No, the Gardener was lucky one now to get such an excellent travel organizer.

In Jerusalem people were spitting on each other and the Futurist was wandering why? The Gardener said that the King had been there teaching. ”Why does the King learn to spit on people?” The Futurist asked. ”Every corner has a King.” Said the Gardener. The Futurist was asking more about the King, but the Gardener told to shut up. ”You can’t talk about the King.” He said. ”The King is dead.”

The Futurist was a bit disappointed, when they had to visit Jordan to see some caves and the trip was done on a bus. A similar let down was Egypt, which was also a bus trip. They checked out some pyramids and some hall with pillars and then traveled to the Valley of the Kings. There the Futurist remembered the King from Jerusalem and asked the Gardener, why the people were obeying the King? They must have known spitting on each other was rather impolite?

The Gardener said that these people were blind; the King had blurred their minds. He explained that because the house needs fresh air and since the corners and windy the King is standing in the corner and blocking the natural ventilation. Then the Gardener was pointing at the Valley of the Kings and said that there is a valley full of those bastards. ”That’s as dry as a King gets.”

He tried to joke that actually the dead Kings should be positioned bent over and head down in a swamp so their behind would act as moose licking salt stone. Futurist didn’t think it was funny. He sympathies were on the King’s side. A King was not a King for nothing. A King, almost an Emperor. The ruler on Earth from the mercy of God.

The Gardener was describing how in the valley had once been a whole city for the workers digging the grave for the King. If the King would never die, they would have been unemployed. The Gardener said that the grave diggers were his friends among the cloth washers and the fishermen on Nile.

Finally was airplane time. Short visit to the Maya pyramids and then some Inca and Aztec ruins. In South-America the Gardener said that here the soul of the continent would be very deep. This had to do with the enormous decomposing process of the jungle. Then he said that the slums of the cities are also jungles. From the window of the airplane he showed the Futurist clear-cut areas in the jungle and cried. Same way he showed the city center and the slums around it when landing to Sao Paolo.

”The King wants a sensitive mind. He needs to cause pain and to feel causing some pain to replicate the very pain that has caused his own confusion – to argument himself. Of course he is the first one to cry, such a sensitive man.”

In South-America the Futurist was interested in two things: music and ladies. He himself was quite instrumental and played at least piano and saxophone and therefore didn’t feel like a stranger with the Latino rhythms. He even danced in a bar after a line of refreshments. Everywhere the ladies were interested of him and good-looking too. The Gardener was so narrow-minded that everybody was prostitutes to him and somehow ”owning to the King” and that the depth would only grow with the age.

Futurist had become quite skeptical toward the Gardener’s King –thinking and on this leg of their world tour decided to start taking care of the Gardener’s mental health – the King was obviously driving him insane. The Gardener had clearly some serious issues to deal with. One night drunk he had been shouting that he would kill the King.

”What is right and what is wrong? I know it: the King has to die. This is my nature. If I don’t believe in my nature, then what is right and what is wrong? The King has to die and I have found one again. If I don’t kill it, it will become a horror – my horror.”

Next day in a hang-over they hit a plane and flew to North-East Siberia, to Magadan. The long flight with a lot of plane changes was enjoyable for the Futurist. They showed many good movies in the planes and the stewardesses served them excellently. They drank gin-tonics and bloody-maries, calvados with coffees. The Gardener didn’t seem to understand.

From Magadan they took an all terrain Russian van further north to the Chukchi Peninsula, where the Gardener wanted to visit his friend Chukchi and the Chukchi’s friend Tundra-friend. The Chukchi was living by the sea and mainly hunting some seals and walrus, sometimes fishing for salmon. The Tundra-friend was taking care of some reindeers and together they were exchanging some goods.

The seaside Chukchies village was an interesting house made out of whale skeleton. It had once been covered with skin and people had actually been living in it. Now only bones were left. It looked like it had been a big whale and people had lived in it like Jonah in Bible. The backbone was the main roof beam and the ribs were the pillars.

”This village is at least 15.000 years old.” Said the Gardener. Futurist thought the wooden plank houses looked exactly like the ones in Magadan and therefore not likely older than maybe 20 years. Then the Gardener explained that before the people were living in leather tens. ”Right, and who had build the houses then?” The Futurist was thinking. ”The King, I suppose...”

In the evening when they were drinking with the Chukdchies the Futurist found out that the Gardener’s friend had murdered his own grandmother. The granny had got old and a family member had to kill her. Futurist could not take this. He gave a lecture, that old people should be respected. The Chukchies couldn’t agree more. They thought it was very respectable to kill an old person.

”Thinking something is one thing. To murder your own grandmother is completely another thing.” The Futurist said firmly and walked out of the house. He came back after some 10 seconds, it was very cold out there in the tundra.

When they were flying from Magadan to Tokyo via Vladivostok the Futurist was talking over and over again the granny-murdering thing. It was clearly bothering him. The Gardener tried to explain that this was an old custom for the Chukchies and most likely the old grandmother didn’t fancy just to hang around as an extra mouth among the poor hunter-gatherers. The Gardener said that is was not a question of moral, but something else. Also a dog would eat its sick puppies.

Then he showed a picture of a beautiful monk looking guy in the in-flight magazine. The guy was standing in a golden oriental dress under a rain of gold sand. He was like a sage and the gold sand was piling around him like in a time glass. The Gardener said that this was a show to make the people think that the artist was Buddha and that they are sharing a divine moment.

”This man doesn’t kill his grandmother.” Said the Gardener. ”He is the King and he has the power to tell people, what is really happening and he has the power to tell what is moral. He will tell people: open your mind and then hack in his own code. Only you can do this, he will say, and he will destroy innocence and beauty.”

The Futurist didn’t want to listen any longer. The bold man in the golden rain was for sure not worse the granny-killing Chuchi. And what if the is gifted and the people want to follow him? He did not look like the King either. King would have been choppier and most likely having a beard.

”The idea to cause pain and to make people believing in the coded moral is a King idea.” Gardener was repeating himself. ”When nothing bad has ever happened, but a man is raped, the soul will go crazy. At least by then the King must die.”

Futurist had to look the Gardener in the eyes and say that he must stop repeating himself. The Gardener went quiet and didn’t say a work until Tokyo. ”The King must die.”

Tokyo was fun indeed. They went to a theatre to check out the Japan Faust and met an interesting theatre director and his crew. They all seemed to know the Gardener. The theatre construction itself was interesting too. It was a movable big tent on top of scaffoldings. It looked actually like a worn out circus and the theatre people were living it. They cooked together and children were running around happily. The Director seemed to be a very wise man and his wife the bhuto dancer was extremely interesting.

In that way the bhuto dancer was a bit strange that when the Futurist was asking her, where had she learned to dance, she replied that actually she is an insect. ”She really is an insect.” The wise Director said and was staring at the Futurist. ”You do understand?”

The Gardener and the Director were talking about the King. They both seemed to know him well. The Director said that now the King has started to preach about love and that he could melt together with his partner. He was teaching people gymnastic exercise that would reinforce their inner spirits.

”The same old game.” Said the Gardener and shook his head. ”It won’t take long until the people will start acting for themselves, suffering and sacrificing for the good thing.”

In Japan they went to the Zen gardens of Kyoto. They were great. In the Zen garden the Futurist kept thinking on the insect bhuto dancer. Somehow it made sense.

Then they took a plane to Saudi-Arabia and made the hiking to the Mecca. Then to Turkey and again some cave and Gardener preaching the good things about the cave man –style and how this could be adapted to the modern cities. In Europe they visited some medieval cathedrals and Stonehenge. In Spain they went to the Arabic palaces, the same in Istanbul. In Norway they saw a Viking boat and then they flew to Moscow and to the Red Square, where the Gardener was again very sentimental.

After Moscow followed a strange journey to Melbourne Australia where the Gardener insisted to start collecting trash bags from houses. The Futurist did not want to do this and so the Gardener hooked up with garbage truck drivers touring the city early at nights. The Futurist was fascinated by the 7-11 convenient stores that would never close up and where he started to collect Hello Kitty –magnets that you would get along the groceries.

In the garbage trucks the Gardener was listening what kind of people would live in the different houses. The truck drivers knew everybody in town based on the garbage that they produced. They would know who had just got rich and they knew who would recycle. After a while collecting garbage the Gardener informed they would move on, the King was not in town.

The King had obviously moved to Vietnam, because the next flight was to Hanoi. There again the Gardener hooked up with a garbage truck and started to sort out the city. One day the Gardener got a package to the hotel. The Blacksmith who was in Kazakhstan had sent it. The Gardener opened the package and there was an assault rifle with some photos of the Blacksmith with two women in desert. The Gardener checked the gun and put it then to a basketball bag, which he took along when he went to his garbage duty.

Next morning the move to the airport was surprising and fast. The plane was to India, where obviously the General was too. On the way to the airport the Futurist noted that the Gardener had forgotten his baseball bag. ”Shut your mouth.” The Gardener whispered angrily. The Futurist took it as an insult and did not say a word until the cosmic wells of North-India.

The cosmic wells were as the name perfectly describes wells dug to the ground where one should descend to watch the stars. The Futurist thought it made no sense. One could see more stars standing on the ground. Anyway, the Gardener seemed to be fascinated. He was arguing that the cosmic well will in a way open the visitors mind and the focus it to the movements of the cosmos. That moment the Futurist remembered, who also opens the minds and he said to the Gardener, that he sounded exactly like the King.

To a slight disappointment for the Futurist the Gardener did not loose his temper. On the contrary he turned quietly to the Futurist and said that the King is dead.